A year ago today, President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 (pictured left). The law overturned the disastrous Supreme Court decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.
The Act explicitly provides that "an unlawful employment practice occurs ... when a discriminatory compensation decision or other practice is adopted, when an individual becomes subject to a discriminatory compensation decision or other practice, or when an individual is affected by application of a discriminatory compensation decision or other practice, including each time wages, benefits, or other compensation is paid" as a result of such a practice.

In the past year, courts around the country have implemented the Act as Congress intended for straightforward pay discrimination cases. In cases involving pay discrimination based on sex, race, disability, and age, these courts have recognized that the statute of limitations is renewed with each paycheck marred by discrimination.

But not every plaintiff has had their pay discrimination case restored by the Act, and there are a few thorny implementation issues that have emerged which courts will continue to flesh out. So where do we currently stand with the Ledbetter Act? One year later, our assessment is that while the Ledbetter Act was a true, hard-won victory for women and families, it is only the first step towards addressing pay disparities for women.

What are some of the issues on the table? Well, to name just a few:

1.  One question still to be worked out by the courts is whether and how the Act is retroactive. Congress made clear that courts must treat the Supreme Court's decision in Ledbetter as if it had never been issued, and pay discrimination plaintiffs should have their claims restored. Thus, plaintiffs who continue to receive discriminatory paychecks (even if initial acts of discrimination occurred prior to the Act) have had their claims reinstated, as well as plaintiffs whose claims were pending at the time of the Act either in court or at the EEOC. In Hester v. N. Ala. Ctr. for Educ., for instance, the Eleventh Circuit agreed that the plaintiff's Title VII claim that she was paid less than male employees engaged in substantially equal work should be restored in light of the Ledbetter Act. However, it remains to be seen what limits courts will place on the Act's retroactivity. For example, courts have not yet had the opportunity to consider the more complex issue of cases involving claims not pending when the Act came down, because plaintiffs decided not to appeal claims or decided not to bring their claims at all due to the Supreme Court's decision in Ledbetter.

2.  Another unresolved issue is whether the Ledbetter Act overturns the Ledbetter decision's application outside of the employment context, and the express statutes identified by Congress in the Act. Before the Act, several state and federal courts had applied Ledbetter to restrict the time period for bringing claims outside the pay discrimination context. It was applied, for example, by a district court in California to a Title IX athletics discrimination case. It also was applied by state courts in a host of contexts, some involving pay discrimination, some not. In contrast, courts have refused to apply the Ledbetter Act to cases outside the pay discrimination context. In a case decided earlier this month, Low v. Chu, an Oklahoma district court rejected a plaintiff's attempts to apply the Ledbetter Act to her claims, stating how the Act "relates to claims of discriminatory compensation practices only." Other courts have refused to apply the Act to cases involving statutes not expressly cited in the Act, such as the Family and Medical Leave Act.

3.  Finally, courts are still hashing out what Congress meant by the phrase "when an individual becomes subject to a discriminatory compensation decision or other practice." The legislative history and language of the Act make clear that the "other practice" must in some way relate to compensation discrimination. But where courts will draw the line in terms of what "other practices" impact compensation such that the statute of limitations is renewed remains to be seen. Some courts have made clear that "failure to promote" claims are not the sort of "other practices" contemplated by Congress. This issue is exemplified by a Texas district court, which acknowledged how district courts all over the country have grappled with the meaning of these terms in the Act, but ultimately held that the plaintiff's failure to promote claim did not constitute a "compensation decision" under the Act. While other courts have held that, for example, a "denial of tenure" can qualify as a "compensation decision or other practice" where it affects the plaintiff's salary.

So what's our assessment of the Act? There is no doubt that laws matter and in the one year since the Act was passed, workers around the country have had their fair pay claims restored. Like any new statute, however, there are a few issues, such as the ones identified above, that must be ironed out. And even once they are, the fact remains that women today are still paid, on average, only 77 cents for every dollar paid to men, and women of color are paid even less than that.

What is clear is that in this economy, women and their families simply cannot afford to be shortchanged in the workplace. Congress should view the Ledbetter Act as the first step in addressing pay discrimination, but the fight to achieve wage equality is far from over. Thus, while the targeted steps taken in the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act are important, they only restored the protection against pay discrimination stripped away by the Ledbetter decision. Congress should build off the Act to continue moving the ball forward to better address pay disparities in the workplace.

Our recommendation -- the Senate should expeditiously pass the Paycheck Fairness Act. Families cannot afford to wait.

Goddess of the Market

Ayn Rand and the American Right

By Jennifer Burns

[Available Here]

Of all the second acts in American lives, perhaps none is more remarkable than the recent conservative embrace of Ayn Rand, the long-dead doyenne of American capitalism. During the market nosedive of 2008 it seemed her version of free market capitalism had been discredited altogether; even former acolyte Alan Greenspan had his doubts, famously telling Congress he had found "a flaw" in his Rand-inspired ideology. Yet in 2009 sales of her books began a ferocious climb, with Atlas Shrugged alone selling more than 300,000 copies. Signs referencing her hero John Galt dotted the tea party protests, and she's been a staple of right wing talk radio and a new favorite of rising stars like Glen Beck. On the campaign trail, candidate Obama would sometimes criticize the virtue of selfishness, making a veiled allusion to Rand's ideas. Now President Obama has wrestled firsthand with the virtue of selfishness, for it is Rand's ideas that have undergirded conservative response to his economic proposals from the auto bailout to health care reform. Nor is she likely to fade away anytime soon; the Washington Post just declared Randroids "in" for 2010.

Though Rand's newfound popularity may have caught liberals and progressives by surprise, my book Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, shows that Rand has always been a staple of political thought on the right. As I describe in the book, her ideas become especially prominent in eras of liberal dominance. She first caught the eye of business conservatives when she worked as a volunteer for Wendell Willkie's 1940 presidential run against Franklin Roosevelt, and she inspired legions of young volunteers who campaigned for Republican contender Barry Goldwater in 1964. The same cycle continues today, as the presidency of Barack Obama has energized and outraged his conservative opposition.

Ayn Rand was born Alissa Rosenbaum in 1905 in St. Petersburg, Russia. When she was twelve, Bolshevik revolutionaries seized her father's chemistry shop, an experience that left young Alissa with a bitter hatred of government and an abiding suspicion of any collective action justified in the name of social good. In 1926 she left Russia for America, where she changed her name and embarked on a remarkable career as a screenwriter, playwright, novelist, and political activist. She developed a Nietzschian-style philosophy of ethical selfishness, holding that traditional values like altruism lay at the root of totalitarian systems such as communism, socialism, and fascism. Rand called her mature philosophy "Objectivism," and it proved wildly popular among college students in the 1960s. Objectivism helped inspire the Libertarian Party, the Cato Institute, and Reason magazine.

Today, Rand's best known work is her politically charged 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged. The 1,084 page book is set in a future dystopian America, where overbearing government regulation and taxation have strangled the economy. In response, the country's top capitalists have gone "on strike," heroically refusing to work for an exploitative system that redistributes their wealth to the needy. Ever since it was published more than 50 years ago, readers have hailed the work as prophecy, seeing in Rand's villains the dim outline of liberal presidents from Lyndon Baines Johnson to Jimmy Carter.

This understanding of Rand as prophetess is widespread on the right today. "Read Atlas Shrugged before it happens" warned a sign at last spring's tea parties. Or as Rush Limbaugh put it: "Ayn Rand, she wrote ‘Atlas Shrugged.' The sequel: ‘Atlas Puked.' We're in the middle of it."

What's different now is that for the first time, conservatives are willing to overlook Rand's once-controversial atheism. Rand's materialistic philosophy is pivotal to her attack upon government, as both she and an earlier generation of conservatives understood. William F. Buckley, Jr., the founder of National Review and himself an avid fan of capitalism, tried to run Rand out of the conservative movement because she was an atheist. He rightly perceived her work as not just as a defense of capitalism, but an attack upon Christianity itself. For Buckley and other traditional conservatives, government charity might be wrong, but charity itself was to be applauded. That Rand criticized Christian morality made her anathema to believers like Whittaker Chambers, who wrote the message of Atlas Shrugged was "to a gas chamber - go!"

What matters most to Rand's latter day conservative followers, however, is how vividly Rand makes the case that government intervention in the economy and social welfare programs are morally wrong. In a clever sleight of hand, Rand's ideas have helped conservatives shift the terms of debate from the causes of the economic crisis to the Obama administration's proposed solutions. She offers a secular version of saints and sinners, for in Rand's world, there are two types of people: producers and looters, or those who work for themselves, and those who work for the government. It's the original version of Richard Nixon's "silent majority" or Sarah Palin's "real Americans."

Rand's acceptance into the pantheon of conservative thinkers is a sign that the libertarian wing of the movement is gaining strength as economic issues move to the fore of American politics. And though liberals expected that the market crash would discredit libertarian economics altogether, Rand's prominence signifies that the ideal of unregulated capitalism itself is becoming more firmly welded to the conservative world view. Whether Rand's popularity lasts into the new decade remains to be seen. But if the history I describe in Goddess of the Market is any guide, Rand and her ideas will be with us for many political cycles to come.

The Seattle Seahawks swift hiring of USC's Pete Carroll and its apparent short-shrift of the NFL's Rooney Rule, which is intended to diversify the League's head-coaching ranks, may actually work to strengthen the rule, writes Johnette Howard for ESPN.com. The Seattle Seahawks apparently had settled on Carroll and gave a cursory interview to the Viking's Assistant Head Coach/Defensive Coordinator Leslie Frazier (right).

Howard notes that the Rooney Rule adopted by the NFL in 2002 after pressure from prominent attorneys, the late Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., civil rights attorney Cyrus Mehri, and labor economist Dr. Janice Madden, has continued to be bolstered by outside pressure. (Including an Issue Brief released by ACS.)

Howard writes:

A watchdog group, the Fritz Pollard Alliance [for which Mehri serves as counsel], now monitors how well teams comply, along with the NFL. The same group - buttressed by a persuasive argument that attorney Douglas Proxmire published in a December 2008 paper for the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy - succeeded just months ago in getting the NFL to extend the Rooney Rule to hiring of general managers and other front-office personnel.

The Seahawks case should be another pivot point. More pressure needs to be exerted on [NFL commissioner] Goodell now.

In his ACS Issue Brief, "Coaching Diversity: The Rooney Rule, Its Application and Ideas for Expansion," Proxmire noted the 2002 report co-authored by Cochran, Mehri and Madden, detailing the NFL's hiring and firing practices over the previous 15 seasons. Their report, Proxmire wrote led "to an obvious, but disconcerting conclusion: despite an overall better record than their white counterparts, black coaches had a difficult time getting hired, and once hired, black head coaches were fired before their white counterparts." Proxmire also urged the NFL to strengthen the Rooney Rule by extending it to cover front-office vacancies. Last summer, Commissioner Roger Goodell announced that the League would indeed require NFL teams to interview more minority candidates for front-office openings.

I would like to begin by thanking the American Constitution Society for the opportunity to share my thoughts on American Needle v. NFL, 129 S. Ct. 2859 (2009), oral arguments for which will be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court later today.

American Needle represents a crucial moment in sports law. The case concerns whether the NFL and its teams-and by extension similar professional sports leagues and their teams-should be considered a "single entity" for purposes of federal antitrust law. As a single entity, a league would be exempt from Section 1 of the Sherman Act, which bars collaborations by competitors that unduly harm competition and consumers.

In the case of a league like the NFL (or the NBA or NHL), the respective teams are independently-owned and they compete both on and off the field. Put another way, teams resemble competitors and thus, per Section 1, their collaborations are presumably subject to Section 1 scrutiny. Subjecting collaborations to Section 1 scrutiny does not necessarily mean those collaborations violate Section 1; many types of collaborations by NFL teams, such as game rules or various procedures for league operations, promote competition and satisfy Section1 scrutiny. Other types of collaborations, however, such as an exclusive licensing contract between every team and one clothing company, could prove more anti-competitive than pro-competitive. Exclusive contracts in sports can limit competition in ways that raise prices and reduce consumer choices.

According to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, whether an exclusive contract for licensed NFL apparel promotes or hurts competition is not an appropriate question for a court. In American Needle v. NFL, 538 F.3d 736 (7th Cir. 2008), the Seventh Circuit reasoned that, at least for purposes of apparel sales, the NFL and its teams are not competitors-they are part of a single entity known as the NFL. A single entity cannot compete with itself, and thus cannot be subject to Section 1. Therefore, in the Seventh Circuit's view, the NFL and its teams can enter into an exclusive contract for licensed NFL apparel with one company (in this case Reebok) without any scrutiny under Section 1 -- even if, by preventing competition from other companies (in this case American Needle), the exclusive contract is arguably anticompetitive.

Other U.S. Courts of Appeals have rejected the Seventh Circuit's single entity analysis, instead concluding that the NFL and its teams are part of a joint venture, which is an association of competitors for a business purpose and which is subject to Section 1 scrutiny. Examples of joint ventures include stock exchanges, credit card networks, and, until American Needle, professional sports leagues. Characterization of professional sports leagues as joint ventures has seemed sensible given the Supreme Court's limitation of single entity recognition in Copperweld Corp. v. Independence Tube Corp., 467 U.S. 752 (1984). Specifically, the Copperweld Court limited single entity recognition to parents and wholly-owned subsidiaries, a business relationship that clearly does not reflect the NFL and its independently-owned and often competing teams-several owners of which, including Al Davis and Jerry Jones, have waged litigations with the NFL.

It is difficult to predict how the nine justices on the Supreme Court will consider American Needle. If the justices value precedent and assurances that competitors compete, they may disfavor recognition of the NFL as a single entity. Alternatively, if they value autonomy for businesses, or if they believe that litigation costs for the NFL and similar leagues in defending Section 1 claims are excessive and unreasonably disruptive of business planning, they may find the NFL's arguments to be persuasive.

Keep in mind, the Court could go farther than the Seventh Circuit, which limited its recognition of the NFL as a single entity to apparel sales. The Court could extend single entity recognition to other types of exclusive contracts (such as those related to leagues and video game publishers) and to league-owned television channels, such as the NFL Network or the MLB Network, which arguably reduce viewership of games for those unable to afford cable or satellite television. Much to the concern of the National Football League Players' Association, the Court could even extend single entity recognition to matters that normally require collective bargaining for Section 1 exemption-meaning leagues could unilaterally impose wage and other employment limitations on players.

American Needle is not entirely about sports. If the NFL is considered a single entity for any purpose, other types of businesses, such as restaurant chains, banks, or credit card companies, could then contend that their business models-which share some characteristics with the NFL in terms of mixed competition and collaboration-warrant single entity recognition as well. American Needle could thus lead to a less robust form of Section 1 scrutiny.

Whichever direction the Supreme Court takes in American Needle, expect Congress to take an active role in ensuring that consumers' interests remain paramount. Congress could propose narrowly-tailored exemptions to Section 1 for professional sports leagues that clearly limit any exemptions.

For more on this topic, please consider reading my forthcoming publication in the Yale Law Journal titled "American Needle v. NFL: An Opportunity to Reshape Sports Law, 119 YALE L.J. 101 (2009)" and my Sports Illustrated column from January 12, 2010 titled "Why American Needle v. NFL is most important case in sports history."

In recent years the U.S. Supreme Court has proved a fair and friendly forum for those asserting claims of retaliation under discrimination statutes such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In Burlington Northern v. White (2006), the Court explained that an employer can retaliate within the meaning of Title VII with actions short of terminations and other ultimate employment actions. In Crawford v. Metro Gov't of Nashville (2009), the Court ruled that Title VII's opposition clause extended to an employee who was terminated after she participated in an employee's internal investigation.

Both Burlington Northern and Crawford arose out of the Sixth Circuit. Some court-watchers say it is likely that the Supreme Court will pluck another Sixth Circuit Title VII retaliation case from its docket. The Court may hear Thompson v. North American Stainless (09-291) to determine whether Title VII's anti-retaliation provision protects an employee who alleged he was terminated in retaliation for his then-fiancée's (now his wife) EEOC claim alleging sex discrimination.

The facts as framed by Thompson certainly reek of retaliation in the layman's sense of the word. Eric Thompson worked for more than five years as an engineer for North American Stainless. Thompson's fiancée, Miriam Regalado, filed an EEOC charge against North American Stainless for gender discrimination. The EEOC notified the company of the discrimination charge on March 7, 2003. Three weeks later, the company terminated Thompson, claiming it was for performance-based reasons. Query - if it really was for performance-based reasons why did the company base its decision only a few weeks after his fiancée's discrimination claim.

Thompson alleged unlawful retaliation under Title VII. The company countered that he was not retaliated against within the meaning of Title VII because he (Thompson) did not actively oppose any unlawful employment practice or participate in any discrimination proceeding. The company contended that Thompson failed to allege that he personally engaged in any protected activity.

A federal district court accepted the company's argument and ruled in its favor. In 2008, a divided three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit reversed 2-1, ruling that the district court ignored Title VII's broad remedial purposes and the EEOC's Compliance Manual, which recognized such claims. The company successfully petitioned for en banc review, as the full Sixth Circuit ruled 10-6 against Thompson and in favor of the company. According to the en banc majority, "the plain text" of the statute disallowed such third-party retaliation claims.

If the Supreme Court takes the case, the question becomes whether it will reject the Sixth Circuit's reasoning as it did in Crawford when it referred to the appeals court's crabbed interpretation of Title VII's opposition clause as "freakish."

Certainly, the broad remedial purpose of Title VII's anti-retaliation provision seemingly should protect a person who is terminated because his fiancée or wife filed a discrimination claim. Employees wouldn't want to avail themselves of Title VII or other employment discrimination statutes if they knew employers could fire their family members with impunity.

Sometimes, courts do go beyond the most literal interpretation of a discrimination statute, as it has in the interracial association cases where a person alleges they have suffered an adverse employment action because of an interracial relationship or biracial child (unfortunately, these things still happen to people in the workplace).

One can only hope the Court will continue its protective reading of Title VII's anti-retaliation provision. If the Court were to provide no help, then perhaps Congress can help. Otherwise, employees' counsel must ensure that their clients have evidence of active opposition or participation in order to ensure that they fall under the protective umbrella of Title VII's anti-retaliation provision.

Workplace laws and norms seriously undercut the ability of mothers and caregivers to handle family demands, thereby depriving the workforce of highly qualified people and harming families, writes Phoebe Taubman in a new report. In "Free Riding on Families: Why the American Workplace Needs to Change and How to Do It," an Issue Brief released today by ACS, Taubman notes an array of obstacles confronting mothers and other caregivers to maintaining successful professional careers and caring for their families.

Taubman, an Equal Justice Works Fellow with A Better Balance: The Work and Family Legal Center, writes:

For a country whose politicians tout family values, the United States has done little to confront [the] costs and support of the critical work that families provide. Compare our public policies to those of our peers around the world. One hundred and seventy-seven nations guarantee leave with income to women in connection with childbirth. Seventy-four countries ensure paid paternity leave or the right to paid paternal leave for fathers. The United States guarantees no paid leave for mothers in any segment of the work force - putting it in the company of Liberia, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Sierra Leone, and Swaziland - and no paid paternity or parental leave for fathers.

Taubman's Issue Briefs calls for advancing up-to-date workplace fairness laws and norms, including supporting paid sick leave and flexible workplace hours. Additionally she notes that more must be done to combat workplace discrimination leveled at women and other workers who struggle to attend to family needs.

Taubman states:

Although the existing framework of laws captures a significant portion of cases involving unfair treatment of family caregivers, there are still many cases that fall through the cracks. The statutory cutoffs that limit the number of eligible employees under the FMLA, for example, consequently restrict the reach and protection of the only federal law passed explicitly to address work/family conflict.

See Taubman's entire Issue Brief here.

Seven months ago, the United States issued a list of human rights commitments and pledges in support of U.S. candidacy for membership in the U.N. Human Rights Council. The decision to join the Human Rights Council was the right thing to do. It was as an important step in breaking with the Bush administration's unilateral and disastrous policies on human rights. While we welcomed this move, we noted that the Obama administration had "missed an opportunity to detail exactly how it will reaffirm its commitment to ending human rights violations at home beyond vague rhetoric." We warned the Obama administration to "move beyond ambiguous commitments which are similar to the ones heard from the Bush administration over the past eight years."

There is no question that this administration is currently facing multiple and daunting challenges, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the safe closing of Guantánamo, the economic crisis and rising unemployment, health care, energy reform and much more. However, nearly a year after Obama's inauguration, the administration has yet to announce any major domestic human rights initiative, outline a detailed plan to honor and expand our existing human rights commitments and translate them into domestic policy, or incorporate them into the daily working of the U.S. government.

Tomorrow, the president will accept the Nobel Peace Prize. The prize is traditionally given out on Human Rights Day, which marks the 61st anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who led the U.S. delegation to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in the 1940s, called this landmark document "the Magna Carta for humanity."

We have seen this administration take bold steps in the early days of Obama's presidency when three executive orders were signed pledging to close Guantánamo within one year, end CIA secret detentions overseas and reaffirming the absolute prohibition against torture. Furthermore, the administration has also committed to advancing civil rights and promoting equal opportunity. We all remember the presidential speech on civil rights delivered at the NAACP annual meeting, and the administration's strong support for legislation like the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which the administration supported in testimony before Congress (PDF). The president has committed to advance women's rights by issuing an executive order establishing the White House Council on Women and Girls and prioritizing a critical women's rights treaty for ratification. The administration's commitment to persons with disabilities has been made clear in the signing of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the White House's celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

However, there has been much debate and criticism about decisions the Obama administration has made in the subsequent months on a number of important issues. The administration has been reluctant to fully investigate acts of torture committed by the Bush administration and end the practice of extraordinary rendition. The practice of invoking the state secret privilege to block accountability continues, and the discredited military commissions in Guantánamo Bay have been revived. There has also been no announcement of a significant action or initiative to fully honor our human rights commitments and treaty obligations and fully incorporate them into national security policies including the treatment, detention, trial and repatriation of detainees in U.S. custody overseas notwithstanding the announcement in September of the detention and prison reforms in Afghanistan.

Therefore, we must continue to make the case for human rights here at home by supporting the goals of the Campaign for a New Domestic Human Rights Agenda - a broad coalition of approximately 50 U.S.-based human and civil rights, civil liberties and social justice organizations tasked with finding the best fusion between civil rights and human rights. Key objectives of the campaign include:

• A new, enhanced executive order revitalizing the Interagency Working Group on Human Rights to coordinate the efforts of federal agencies and departments to respect and implement human rights obligations as U.S. domestic policy;
• Transforming the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights into a U.S. Commission on Civil and Human Rights;
• Monitoring government compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination which the U.S. ratified in 1994; and,
• Strengthening federal, state, and local government coordination to support human rights.

On Human Rights Day 11 years ago, President Clinton issued an executive order creating an Interagency Working Group on Human Rights, which was subsequently disbanded during the Bush administration. The ACLU reiterates its call for the resurrection of a more effective Interagency Working Group on Human Rights to coordinate and promote human rights within domestic policy, and for the implementation and enforcement of ratified human rights treaties and essentially bridging the often artificial gaps between civil rights and human rights.

Further, President Obama must make it clear that human dignity is of paramount importance, and that accountability for human rights is a U.S. national interest. The administration must seize the opportunity to uphold core American values of fairness and justice for all by building a much-needed human rights infrastructure here at home.

While presidential speeches, like the one expected in Norway tomorrow, are important to rally public support for human rights, what is needed is unequivocal and concrete action to honor human rights commitments at home. Too many people have suffered as the United States' human rights record crumbled under the Bush administration. The time is for action is now.

[This was initially published at Huffington Post. Image via United Nations Photo.]

Congress is moving to protect whistleblowers from employer retaliation. Buried in the Investor Protection Act is an amendment that would close a loophole that currently exposes some employees to the will of their employer for reporting corporate wrongdoing.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

[T]he Labor Department has dismissed many whistleblower complaints on a technicality, saying the law, as written, doesn't apply to corporate subsidiaries.

Since the law was passed in 2002, the government has ruled in favor of corporate whistleblowers in 21 out of 1,455 complaints. Another 996 cases have been dismissed. The rest of the cases were withdrawn, settled or are pending.

The amendment just passed out of the House Financial Services Committee by a party-line vote and should come before the full House in a matter of weeks.

Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that a gay public defender must be compensated for the health insurance denied to his partner under the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

The San Francisco Chronicle reports: 

[Judge Reinhardt] said the 1996 federal law, the Defense of Marriage Act, violates the court's anti-discrimination rules for court-supervised employees. It also deprives them of their constitutional right of equal protection by denying benefits based on their gender and sexual orientation, Reinhardt said.

Reinhardt issued the ruling as head of the court's committee for resolving personnel disputes concerning public defenders. The decision thus bears no precedential value.

Reinhardt, the court's "liberal lion," is not alone in ruling for personnel challenging DOMA. The more conservative Chief Judge Alex Kozinski has also sided with court employees seeking benefits for same-sex partners.

The Senate held a hearing on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) today, "which is a top priority of the Obama Administration and the Justice Department," according to the Justice Deparment's blog. ENDA would permit legal action against employers determined to have descriminated against an employee for their sexual orientation or gender identity.

At today's hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez of the Civil Right Division testified about the plight of "our lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender brothers and sisters" in the workplace:

No American should be denied a job or the opportunity to earn promotions, pay raises and other benefits of employment because of his or her sexual orientation or gender identity, which have no bearing on work performance. No one should be fired because he or she is gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. Period. 

...

Protecting valued members of our workforce from discrimination should not be left to a patchwork of state and local laws that leaves large gaps in coverage. Discrimination in my home state of Maryland is just as wrong as discrimination in Montana.

Preliminary data from a recent survey by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) and the National Center for Transgender Equality indicate that members of the LGBT community are not uncommonly the targets of workplace discrimination. "[T]ransgender people experience unemployment at double the rate of the general population," writes NGLTF's Jaime Grant in The Hill. "Predictably, the study shows that high unemployment correlates with poverty, housing insecurity and poor health care access for transgender people."